September 28, 2006

The boys have their own floor: 2 bedrooms, a bathroom and a walk-in closet. Their domain...It sounds big, no worries, it's not. Tiny but well divided. Let say we maximised the use the available space. You have to when you live here...Stop! Strike that, if DH reads it he's going to say I'm complaining again....

They spend a lot of time up there, chatting, playing. They have always been close but since turning 4, they have become best friends. Their relationship is very well balanced which always amazes me as they could not be more different..In everything..

Every night as I'm done putting them to bed, I walk downstairs and EVERY NIGHT I hear the same conversation:

Maxim: Nathan....

Nathan: yes?

Maxim: What are you doing?

Nathan: Sleeping...

Maxim: ok..Me too..

Pause....

Maxim: Nathan..

Nathan: Yes?

Maxim: Are you really sleeping?

Nathan: Yes

Maxim: ok....Me too

Silence......

This has been going on for 3 months now...Puts a smile to my face everytime...

Ok this is NOT an example of a good sooc or a good conversion but I love it. This is them now.

September 26, 2006

This post has been updated after a (good) night sleep. More information been added, typos removed, bad English corrected etc...

First let me apologise for taking so long before posting this. A few emails received this week reminded me that I still had not posted the steps of my color conversion.

Disclaimer:

I am still new to photography, still learning every day, so not a pro by any means. When I see my earlier posts on 2peas, I am happy to see that I am getting better and that all the time invested starts to pay off. And DH would be glad to read this. He does complain that I spend too much time on this hobby of mine. But as many of you can also testify, it is not possible to stay away from photography for too long. The learning nevers stops, and bring new challenges every day. My current one is backlighting. When I see what Brenda achieves (www.bloggingwithbrenda.blogspot.com) I am in awe of her talent. Her work is just delightful to see.

I don't know it all. So please do not take for my word for everything. I do not have "the" conversion that will do magic to your pictures. However, I have been so flattered by all the nice comments I have received, that I thought now is a good time for giving back. And I am happy to share what works (or not) for me. So this is more a post to give you some pointers and tools that can help you. Just play around, try it, experiment rather than only following my steps. These steps worked for the pictures below, but may not for the pictures I'll taking tonight...

Some basic points:

I'll start with the color conversion and later this week, will try to post my b&w conversion. I think conversions are a very personnal and evolving thing! I am leaning towards less contrasty thn 6 months ago!!! Which I think is a good thing...I have every actions money can buy but eventually, I did realise that no actions can work on every picture, every lighting, every mood, every skin tone. After a while, I noticed that my tweakings followed a pattern. I have not recorded these steps in an action because it could be that a picture only requires 1 S curve but the other will require 2. Same thing for soft light layers.

However I do use actions sometimes. And I will let you know at the end at the end of this post which ones. I have MANY but only really use 2 or 3.

Something else, I'd rather be known as a good sooc photographer than a good post processor. I like PS for what it adds to a correct sooc picture, but not that much that I want to spend hours editing. The best 2 lines I have read are from someone at ILP wo said - cannot remember the exact words but it came down to: pp can only help you make a great picture, if your original had no big technical flows. It is is blurry, no amount of USM or SS wil help you. If the exposure is way off (highlights are blown), no amount of editing will bring you the details. etc. This was an eye opener for me. I guess I was under the impression that PS skills could save everything and anything. Another thing that striked me at the time was how everyone was going on about getting the best sooc possible. It took me a while to get it, but when it sunk in and I finally worked on exposure, I made my life much easier in PS.

I shoot raw but that's only because I am too lazy to do a CWB so I do tweak the WB in ACR if need be. I adjust nothing else, except sometimes the exposure slider. I turn off any sharpening and anything else re noise reducing filter. Apart from WB & exposure, I do everything in PCS2.

I love colors. You surely have noticed!!! When I first started I tried to make myself follow the b&w trend of the times. Yes trends can be powerful. Everyone wants to belong, don't they? But really at heart, I am a color person. You should see my house: every room has a different color! However, b&w's diplay better on walls, mixes better etc.. So at the risk of disappointing you, most of my colors stay in a album and the b&w's end up on my wall...

I am not really into soft glow, midnight sepia or any other such treatments. So my steps will reflect that.

Workflow:

I download the pictures from a CF card onto my PC and immediately save on 2 external drives. I will go through them all, twice. Each time, I check all pictures for sharpness and correct exposure. Anything soft, grainy because of poor exposure, poor composition, blown, clipped shadows etc. are ditched. After these 2 rounds I am left with 70% of my CF card pictures. I then go through editing...If a picture is for my own purpose (ie my kids for scrapbooking), these criteria do not apply. Any blurry, badly exposed etc pictures is good enough for me as long as there is emotional value. Technical perfection is far from being everything. I'd rather get my DD with "her" special expression rather than perfect lighting....

The pictures below were both taken today inside, changing weather outside (sunny/cloudy). DD is facing a SW window in #2 and turning her back to it in #1. You can see both soocs and both edits.

#1 - SOOC (a long time I wanted to capture these curls..before they go...). Probably this picture does nothing to you but to me, it's the way I see her playing on the floor next to me...

Steps -

Defog - USM (10/20/1 for a picture up to 8x10, anything bigger will get 15/30/1)

Curves - Slight S shape

Duplicate layer, change mode to soft light, reduce opacity to about 15% (varies on every picture)

Step 3. did blow (or near blow) the highlights on DD's shirt (right hand side) so add a mask layer on the soft light layer. Make sure foreground color is black. Choose a soft brush, opacity at around 55% and brush over the blown area to bring back the details of the shirt.

Flatten

Another slight S curves to bring more colors

Levels, move the midtones slider to the left (lighten) - they got darker from step 6

Smart sharpen at 30/1/0

Save

Steps 2 to 7 are not fixed. However they are my basis. Unfortunately, it is very rare that I can just apply the same steps to various pictures. I do edit one by one, varying the steps, the opacity of the adj. layers etc. It can happen than I use 2 soft light layers. Or that i need to curves. These are the tools I use always: usm, soft light and/or overlay mode, curves, midtones slider in levels and smart sharpen. My best friend is the mask layer. Anything that became too light or too dark after an adjustment can be adjusted back by way of a mask layer.

I never use contrast/lightness and very rarely levels, except for the midtones slider. To add some contrast I will usually add a soft light layer. It has the advantages to pop the colors too. If the skin tones are too affected, just use a mask layer to bring the details from the background layer back.

If a picture is slightly underexposed, I try to correct that by either lightening the midtones in levels, or use a screen layer at varying opacity. I do that as step 1. before the defog step. usually I will get a slightly underexposed picture if my subject is wearing white. In order to not blow the whites, I will meter of the shirt and not the face..resulting in underexposed skin tones. I will corect that during pp, and a mask layer will avoid that I end up with blown whites.

If after tweaking the WB in ACR, I still have a color cast, I correct that as step 1. (before defog) using color balance. To know which tweaking is required, I will go over the subject face and read the C, M, Y info #'s in the info palette. The "rule" is that the cyan number should be between 50% and 70% of the magenta number, and the yellow should be slightly over the magenta number (and should never fall below). In the picture below, the numbers in DD's neck are: C 5, M 13, Y16. Although the ratio between C and M is lower than what I just wrote it should be, just remember these are guidelines. You'll have to decide for yourself what looks acceptable or not within the boundaries. It took me a little while to work with these numbers but having got the hang of it, it really help me checking where my color casts are and what they are. In color balance, it is just a matter of moving the sliders to get the needed correction. In these pictures, I felt that color balancing was not necessary.

Picture #2 required less pp than #1. I think #1 had cloudy light and for #2 it was sunny. To me, the quality of light does a lot to depth in my photographs. Probably because I am still not very good at reading the light.

I hope that this helps some. I am sure you are all more confused now than before reading my ramblings!!! Sorry!!! But writing this was also a good exercise for me, it helped sorting out my thoughts around my pp. I used to be - and still am at times - so unefficient. I would go through the same steps over and over, ending up with a over processed image... What I am trying to do now is envisage the final product before I start.

What I have learnt in the past year from the various board I visit and from some wonderful people that have helped me along the way, is as follows:

Nail exposure and everything will be allright! And don't be afraid to bump your iso

Invest in good lenses (wink wink Erica!). You get what you paid for.

Learn to read the light. This is where I am so deficient....I have a long road ahead of me!

Actions I use:

Amanda's color pop1. I use this one a lot for still life pictures. Most the non-people pictures on my post "Cool Place" have been pp'd using this action. Especially in situation of very contrasty lighting when blown-out areas don't matter. This action will give you 2 adjustment layers. to add even more pop: reduce opacity of top layer to 20%, change mode to soft light. Reduce the middle layer opacity to taste.

Amanda's smooth color. I will use this picture mostly on beach shots. It works well on a correctly WB picture that is well exposed. Gives it that much color pop and contrast. I have a small tip I can share: duplicate layer before running the action, run the action, the resulting middle layer may darkened the shadows too much. Just use a mask layer to bring the details back. You can adjust the top layer opacity to taste (adjust the midtones)

Velvia in 10% increment (free). If at the end of my pp, I still need a boost in saturation, I will run this action on a dup layer. This may happen when the colors (clothes, surroundings) are pale, subdued and no amount of soft light layers did the trick. By running the action on a dup layer, you can erase back the skin tones (if they became too pinkinsh from the velvia) via a mask layer. Also I like my skines tones to be kind of cool. If they end up too cool, I will run a velvia at 10% to warm them up.

That's it. Good for you if you're read that far! There is nothing left that i know that you don't!!!. If I think of more I will add it. I will pobably save this somewhere else and create a link on my sidebar. If you have any questions, please ask. I'd be happy to help. And if you found it helpful, please leave me a note....

September 25, 2006

I got the pleasure to take more pictures of this GORGEOUS little girl. She's crawling fast now and we had to play tricks to keep her there and looking at me. She definitely makes the cut for my website. How adorable is she?

September 24, 2006

If you have any to spare, send them my way. We've been trying to move for sometimes that feel like ages. DH works far too far from his office, and we've been holding off for a while but it must happen. Soon...

I will spare you the details and technicalities of the real estate market here in NL, besides that it is VERY crowded, making space VERY expensive. Anyway, we have found this new project and it's perfect. The catch: we're on the waiting list and the houses are being sold one after the other and we can't seem to get out of the waiting list.

There are 2 houses - unsold - that could still be ours s. Ok we need a miracle, but I won't be beaten before time. So anything you can send my way: vibes, thoughts, prayers!!!! Thanks.

And a photoblog isn't one without pictures! Not one of the houses but my little muse, inspiring me everyday.

September 20, 2006

I was fortunate to be able photograph my friends little girl yesterday. What a treat! Only one week old. Just a sneak peek for now. I started editing these, but fell in love with these two already....Holding this tiny precious gift, I felt so happy for my friends who already are wonderful parents.

September 18, 2006

A week ago on Saturday, we went for lunch with some friends. They have 3 kids and so do we, which means we need to think where to go and eat. 6 kids go hardly unnoticed, and as much as I think our kids are well behaved, they remain 6 little people between 0 and 5 years of age...I guess you know what I mean.

I had been tipped about this place www.praq.nl and this was the perfect time to experiment. Very children friendly, very parents friendly. Hip and trendy, we had a good time. Kids could walk around as they please and we just enjoyed our wine (yes more wine! And food of course..).

I went slightly overboard on some of these, pp-wise!!! Just having fun with bright colors....

September 13, 2006

I'm not normally bragging too much about my kids..We met all our milestones in time, not before, not after. Except to say that they're only 5 and can ski so well already. But no less would be expected from kids with parents like DH and I.

But yesterday Nathan made me so proud and I have to share this. In NL school starts at 4, and they go full days Monday to Friday (Wednesday is a 1/2 day). So this year is their second year. They go to a Montessori school, not because I am a fan of the method (I am not) but because it is the best school in the area and it is litterally 2 mns walk from our house. What I like about the Montessori system is that they put much emphasis on the social and emotional development of the kids. One of the activities that they promote a lot is presentation (talk) to others, standing up in front of a group of kids, usually 2 or 3 classes, on a chosen subject. Well this is not me, I hate it, will do it, but it will make me sick the week running up to the talk.

Nathan is a kid that is passionate about nature: animals, plants, the human body. He just wants to know it all. His topic of the moment is butterflies. He recognises a lot of them, can name them, grow them (we have some at home right now) and most of it can walk you through the whole cycle.

DH brings the kids to school yesterday and the teacher asks Nathan if he told us what major thing he did the day before. Nathan has no idea what she was talking about. So she goes on explaining to DH that Nathan, together with another child from his class, explained to 2 older classes, the life cycle of a butterfly.

She said he was amazing. He stood up in front of the kids and just went through it, with so much details, that even the bigger kids did not know, enjoying every minute of it. When question time came, he answered everything but then told everyone that they were not asking the right question, and if they would let him, he would just carry on explaining his way.

I was trying to picture the scene, my little guy in front of these big kids, teaching them a lesson. I was VERY proud. When I asked him that following evening, he could not understand what the fuss was all about...

September 10, 2006

I'm in the kitchen, fixing dinner, Nathan is helping me out. Maxim, as usual, is on the sofa still trying to beat the last level on his Gameboy. We then hear Super Mario going "Mama Mia".... Meaning Maxim lost again and to proove it starts swearing. I remind him that we may not use such word. I won't tell you what it is, it was that bad. In English! So obviously he picked it from us..

Then Nathan turns to me and said: mama why do such words exist if we can't use them?